In orthopedic surgery, surgeons handle and manipulate bone and the surrounding soft tissue, including muscle, fascia, tendon, ligament and capsule. For some surgical procedures, successful handling of tissues and establishing proper tensile forces in the tissue is often the key to high reproducibility, good soft tissue healing, restoration of overall limb function in the patient, and a long lasting implant. However, methods for measuring soft tissue tension during surgery are inadequate. Current tissue tension measurement methods require either a violation of the soft-tissue (e.g. buckle transducer), or access to a free end of the tissue (e.g. graft tensioner).